Not sure about how often one of their own does them, but I know a guy that does secret shopping all the time for GM…primarily service. He gets a set of instructions on various criteria (check in, hospitality of service manager, cleanliness, signage, certain marketing things visible, etc.). He then takes his car in for a basic service, oil change, rotation. He then fills out a report on how they did. He gets a free oil change out of it and a few bucks on top of that.
Toyota does it monthly.
I get secret shopper emails. I did it a few times. Nissan does it a lot for oil change. I received some for Dodge too. I stopped doing them because it isn’t really worth the time. Need to sign up for the gig and gig is usually a specific time frame (like 1-2 weeks) then you need to fill out a detailed post gig survey. A few times I actually need an oil change so it worked out but otherwise not worth the time for $20-30 pay.
OK I’ll bite … can you tell us anything about the “anything less than a 5 is a zero” spiel that pretty much every sales agent has requested for the post-sale survey rating? I really hate that. I don’t want to mess with someone’s livelihood, but I also resent feeling like I can’t be honest (5 is perfection, and that truly doesn’t happen often). So I’ve skipped the survey entirely on several occasions.
The surveys suck. They push for excellence and most salespeople’s bonuses are tied too it. Toyota recently changed it so we don’t know the scale yet.
But previously if you monthly average was under 98.5% you were in trouble
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We need a minimum of 3 surveys and need to stay above 95% national average to hit our unit tier. It’s stupid because there are too many factors that effect CSI (I’ve been absolutely shafted on surveys because the car broke down within a week). One salesperson at my store this month got a 7/10 on his survey over something completely out of his hands and got a 40% reduction in pay ($500 mini to a $300 mini and a huge bump down in gross %) because a product specialist “didn’t reach out in a timely manner”. I’ve straight up refused to sell cars to people that I think will give me bad CSI. Not worth taking a 4 (and sometimes 5) figure pay reduction over one pissed off customer. Normally stores will “burn a survey” or send it to a fake email address but lovely JLR will send a physical version in the mail if the email bounces.
Even have had clients hold CSI hostage in exchange for floor mats. The whole concept is completely outdated and needs to be revised.
Tl;dr: Surveys are usually more important than the commission itself. Customers think giving a 6 on an email survey doesn’t have any effect, when in reality it can greatly effect whether or not we are able to make any money.
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I’ve definitely had some dealership experiences that were less than 10, but I know the implications of those surveys and don’t want to mess with people’s livelihoods, so I give all 10s or just ignore the survey if it was bad enough.
You have to figure that manufacturers know that and understand how much less useful it makes the surveys, yet they still do it. I wonder why?
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But is ignoring survey not having a negative effect?
The whole concept of these surveys is so stupid I don’t know why manufacturers are even still doing it since you aren’t getting much true and honest picture. What’s the point of that data anyways if it’s all fake?
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I ignore surveys, if I can’t give a perfect score. For my Volvo service I just tell the GM that his service department sucks, if it was really bad 
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That’s what dealers have been asking this whole time. Concept is broken and outdated.
Fortunately, ignored surveys have no negative effect.